


Keep Going

by blcwriter



Series: Write a New Alphabet [7]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Communication Failure, Depression, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Illnesses, Mama Stilinski feelings to sob over, Meta, Miscommunication, Multi, Pack Family, Pack Feels, Panic Attack, Parenting 101, Potential trigger revelation about how Mama Stilinski died, Pre-Slash, Self-Flagellation, Sheriff POV, Stilinski Family Feels, except Stilinski men do not cry, references to past canonical character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-24
Updated: 2012-11-24
Packaged: 2017-11-19 09:52:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/572005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blcwriter/pseuds/blcwriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“We’re going to fix this.”  He was going to fix this.  Because it was his mess in the first place; Stiles might be nearly a grownup, might have a whole pack of lost boys who were better about saying thank you than John ever was.  When had he ever thanked Stiles for his plain baked chicken and steamed brown rice and veggies, these last ten years, when John bitched about wanting bacon and Stiles was just trying to protect him from… everything, but an eight-year old kid only knew how to microwave dinner, that and do the laundry.  What was that Winston Churchill quote?  Something about going through hell, and keep going?</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keep Going

**Author's Note:**

> Please read the tags for potential triggers. Warnings for: panic attacks, chronic grief and depression, super-angst on all sides, truncated thoughts because feelings hurt and denial’s a powerful thing, oblique discussions about alcohol abuse and self-medication, Mama Stilinski feels and death reveals (working on the fanon assumption of cancer, but NOTE POTENTIAL TRIGGERS about the specific details of how she died), parents and kids not talking to one another the way that they should, the sheriff (I’m going with the fanon name John, sort of) having a really profane internal monologue when he’s upset, and more painful feels than a chest full of were-claws. 
> 
> Please note that in this chapter, I'm trying to address all the stupid, ridiculous too-many feelings I have about the relationship between Stiles & his dad, and in no way do I mean to character bash. Papa Stilinski is a bamf. He loves his son. And he's completely lost about what else to do. In the show, the sheriff and his son are written as never really talking, ever, and this is my fictionalized attempt to resolve how they’ve drifted apart. 
> 
> You can still love the hell out of your kid and never do an active thing to hurt them—and then still end up hurting them, an awful lot— the “benign” in benign neglect doesn’t negate the “neglect,” even when everyone's trying as hard as they think they're capable of trying.

He’d read more goddamned medical records than he ever cared to, and not just ones for cases. But at least these ones seemed to say Stiles would be fine, between the lines-- even if the apparent causes of today’s hospital landing weren’t _Renal insufficiency, dehydration, clonic-tonic seizures, late adolescent borderline anorexia, secondary situational depression, ADHD/Adderall overdose_ , at least not _per se._

At least if what Melissa and fucking Alan Deaton were saying was true, and what Derek Hale was looking guilty about, was the actual case.

All John knew was Stiles, slack-mouthed and conked out and too fucking skinny and pale in that goddamned bed—like Angie, and Jesus, Christ wept-- John was raiding Stiles’ closet and getting rid of all those damned baggy clothes, if his own son was hiding the fact that fucking _magic_ was making his metabolism even more fucked up than the goddamned drugs already had, and some bullshit about magical highs and lows and manic depression-mimicking symptoms because of the way the human body responded to channeling magic.

“None of this explains to me why Stiles’ version of this was something along the lines of _sometimes I can do some magical stuff, it’s hard to explain, there’s, like, herbs and powders and dust and being a stubborn asshole, y’know, believing, involved, plus, quantum mechanics,_ and instead you’re telling me that he’s some kind of witch who managed to get a bunch of untrained kids to ward off evil fairies for ten minutes, with fireplace pokers and cast iron pans? And no one has ever explained the goddamned lightning scorches back in those tunnels with all those damned alphas.”

Melissa’s face was blank, so—fine, okay, at least he wasn’t the _only_ one out of some of the loop in this, here—but Deaton and Derek were exchanging a look that John couldn’t fathom. Goddamnit. He _knew_ he should have pressed more, but Stiles. Fuck. Goddamn it to hell.

“You,” he said, shoving at Alan because damnit, goddamnit, fuck, “you were supposed to be teaching him. What to do. How to control it. That’s what he said."

Deaton nodded, not bothering to smooth out his shirt. He looked for once in his life like he had some emotion besides unfuckingruffled or his “the sign says we’re closed” bitchface. The vet pursed his lips, frowning. “Stiles’ talent—or his will to use it—is even stronger than I had thought. It… has been a while since I’ve worked with anyone who can do more than the mechanistic magics that require nothing innate. And… ” the vet hesitated a moment, before saying it with a little distaste, “Stiles’ capacity for research and intuitive leaps is. I am not as young as I was.”

Which meant jack shit to John except as some kind of admission that Deaton had gone into this half-cocked because he had an apprentice boner or something, and hadn’t worked with someone like Stiles. Jesus. God save them all. If the fucking magician veterinarian whatever he was couldn’t get a handle on Stiles….

“You were supposed to protect him,” he felt himself snarl as he wheeled on Derek, resisting the urge to body check the werewolf. He took a breath. He was not going to lose it, wasn’t going to challenge a goddamned alpha werewolf on his ability to protect someone he’d said—sworn on his family’s ashes—he’d said Stiles was part of his pack. Not today. 

There was a lot more he wanted to say, “You said you would…” he started in again, because Stiles and the Hale boy were close, he’d found himself liking Derek too much these last couple of months, Derek and the rest of those kids, motherfucking werewolves, and now Stiles was….

“John,” Melissa interrupted, grabbing his arm, pulling him away, around the corner. “You know Stiles does what he wants,” she started to say. “And you’re not just angry at Derek and Alan.”

He knew that. He was an asshole and he was pissed off, but he wasn’t stupid. He drank for logical reasons, even if they weren’t good ones, not in the end. Still, though, he choked out at Melissa, “If I find out you knew this magic shit was making him sick, so help me, Melissa,” because Stiles didn’t spend time at the McCall’s like he once did and still wouldn’t talk about what had happened with Scott. The one time John asked, Stiles had shrugged, his chin fucking wobbling as he’d brushed off the observation that Scott seemed to always be with Lahey, never with Stiles. Stiles had just firmed his mouth and looked far too old—said only they’d had _a difference in philosophy about werewolfdom and pack,_ even if Scott was still around, at the edges. John didn’t know shit about supernatural wolf dynamics, but the whole thing with Scott was so fucking uneasy he didn’t know how the kids hadn’t all torn each other or themselves apart. John had seen that, even if all his attempts to get the pack to talk about what happened between Scott and Stiles got him zilch. Werewolf _omerta,_ God save them all. It didn’t make any sense except some kind of teenage and supernatural drama, probably involving Allison, too, but John would get word about Stiles having breakfast or coffee with Melissa around town, and he’d always, until now, felt relieved about that.

Like at least maybe Stiles was talking to someone. Like maybe Melissa would see something John couldn’t. Had missed. She had good eyes.

Melissa’s expression was nothing but sympathy, though, and fuck her. Fuck them all.

He knew—he _knew_ —alright, he did, he was the goddamned top cop in this two horse fucking county and his own kid had been wasting away right in front of his eyes and had John noticed? Cut back on the number of details he took for himself? Hired more help? Done some fucking grocery shopping or anything else for the house besides checking the locks and the doors, making sure that Stiles was paying the bills?

A small, tiny part of John had seen it, when he and Stiles did their ships in the night thing or he’d come in on some part of the pack in the house, orbiting Stiles, orbiting Derek, but that part of him had ignored his cop instincts that something was wrong, still. Instead, it had curled up in the back of his head and said _not him too, not Stiles, no_ , because the get-your-ass-out-of-bed-everyday part of him had said he had work, work, and more work (because who else was he protecting, if he wasn’t protecting his own goddamned son). Plus, Stiles had friends now, Stiles had told him some, if not all, of the crap that had gone down, and he’d stopped lying outright about what went down during these pack encounters, even though John was sure he was still getting a highly edited version of things. But no one had shown up, bloody and torn at the house, since he’d known, and he’d wanted to believe that things would be fine. That they might finally be, especially because the magic-whatever seemed to making Stiles more focused, less distracted by anything shiny. 

No, he’d let himself think everything was _okay_ because there was pack, laughing and jostling and filling the house up with noise, like before, the three of them loud, but. No. Nope. No. He’d been wrong, and Stiles was still hiding things from him, and now they were here.

\--

He’d had to run down to the station, sign some stuff only he could, and it was shift change, debriefings, all of that shit. By then, two hours had passed, but Melissa had called him every half hour to say Stiles was still sleeping, that he was fine, that he was still stable—like everything was going to be fucking fixed by a few days of some IV electrolytes, some medication and a nutritionist’s visit. He’d managed, because he was at work, he was a professional, damnit, not to snap at her soothing tone; that was her professional tone, the one she took with patients and upset families. She was good at that voice, he’d seen it, there was a reason she was a head nurse, but John was in no mood to be soothed.

“He’s up,” she said next, when he picked up the phone, his clipped “How is he,” his only greeting because damnit, when the fuck was Carmody going to get in, John’d told him to get his ass in here like he was on fire. Motherfucking psychopathic teenagers with murdering lizard-Jacksons, killing all his good deputies and leaving him with _morons_ who were just a step up from rent-a-cops. Christ. “He’s fine, he’s lucid, he’s fine, John,” she said. Well, John would judge that for himself. He was done letting other people tell him what was going on with his kid. On his way out, he barked at Cindy to put a fucking APB out for Carmody, damnit, if the asshole wasn’t going to show up for work.

Melissa moved to intercept him when he made it back, a half-hour later, but she backed off at whatever glare was on his face. Stiles’ door was closed, the lights on, curtains drawn, and there was more than one visitor in there, probably the whole goddamned pack. 

Fuck if he cared.

“Out. All of you. Now,” he said, shoving the door open against whomever was sitting against it, because they had supernatural hearing and healing, Derek wouldn’t set a human with a back to the door-- and they were in the goddamned way right now.

Stiles narrowed his eyes, shared some glance at Derek, then nodded at the rest of the kids, whose expressions of kicked-puppy, defiant, worried, stressed, and tear-streaked thrown in his, Derek’s, and Stiles’ directions he was _not_ going to parse at the moment. Which left Derek, and Stiles, and some woman John had never seen before in his life, and of the three of them, only Derek had to grace to look apprehensive. The woman, though, if that’s what she was-- she was beautiful, looked about as serene as a frozen lake or some tall tree in winter-- and she had a hand on Stiles’ arm. Not possessive, but there was some kind of interest, there.

“You must be the queen of the tree and water fae Local 29,” John snarked, because clearly, he was some bit player in a supernatural drama who only got called in to be the dramatic relief when his kid couldn’t get patched up by the goddamned _vet_. Well, that ended now. “You get out, too. Derek, I don’t want…”

“They’re going,” Stiles interrupted. “For now. I’ll see you later. Derek. Regina.” He had some kind of notebook in his lap, a pencil, some kind of design traced on the paper—a half a fucking hour awake and he was already doing more goddamned work for those people. Jesus.

“You’ll see them when I say it’s okay,” he barked on reflex, and Stiles’ look at him was even, before he flicked his glance over at Derek, like he was giving the alpha werewolf _permission_ to leave him alone with his own fucking father. Like there was some _danger_ from John. 

Only once they were gone did Stiles show any expression—and it wasn’t what he expected, because Stiles ran a bony, shaky hand over his face, and then swung his legs over the bed so he was at least looking at John from a less defensive position. 

Someone had brought him pajama pants from the house—someone who wasn’t John, because no, why would he think about whether his son might not want his ass hanging out of a hospital johnny—along with another one of those damned too-big t-shirts that his kid hid inside all of the time. What was he hiding from, anyway?

Stiles’ tone was tired and flat, and his eye-contact had John’s arm hair creeping. “Look. I’ll move out as soon as I’m out of here, one of the pack will come get my stuff, it’s not like the school isn’t used to my forging your signature on late slips all the time, anyway, so if you just let it slide, then I can-- well—I’ll get out of your hair as—as soon as I can, and then you can just. Go back to work. I don’t know, you don’t hate Boyd all that much, he can keep you in the loop about shit that’s going down in the woods,” he went on, “Or Erica, you like her, shit, fuck, I’m gonna have to find her a new job. Just… I’ll—we’ll make sure the pack keeps out of your way as much as they can.”

“You’re not moving out,” he managed to answer, because what the fuck was Stiles even talking about?

“I’m not leaving the pack. Or giving up the magic.” Stiles’ tone was so even—even like Angie’s had been, when she’d asked him, because she had known, and he had said no, because he couldn’t—and Stiles stared back at him with those same goddamned eyes, that same fucking stubborn expression. And then his kid just shrugged, this bony, tiny expression that looked like defeat. He sounded so _tired_. Why hadn’t John… Stiles interrupted the thought. “You’ll be safer, anyway, if the big bads think I’m not leverage for you, I mean, the opposite, sure, but, if I’m not there, if I’m off with the pack all the time, it’ll deflect some unwanted attention, so yeah. I _am_ moving out.” His arms flexed where he gripped the sides of the bed.

He had no idea how long he stared at this—fucked-up kid who was obviously trying so fucking hard to stay still, not fidget right now, and hadn’t it always been like that, he’d be trying to figure out what was going on in Stiles’ head and Stiles would just _wait_ and fail at being calm about it and. Fuck. Fuck.

“What the hell do you mean you’re not leverage for me?” He’d sit down if he wasn’t afraid he’d never get up, yell if he was more sure this thing under his sternum wasn’t a heart attack but was just too many fucking feelings, but—Stiles just shrugged. Gave up the ghost on not fidgeting, started doodling something that looked like a rune. “Stiles. What did you mean by that?” He was seventeen, for Christ’s sake. Who did Stiles think John needed protection from, damnit?

His son let go of the notebook and grabbed the side of the bed again, so hard it creaked. Finally, he blinked, licked his lips, said—“We both know I just remind you of her, all the things that I’m not, all the things I suck at, I’m not… what you want,” he managed, before his voice tightened. “I get it, I wouldn’t want to be around me either, I’d work all the time too, but… I can finally _do_ something, help, protect someone, even if there’s something clearly fucked up with me that I can make those kinds of morality calls…” Stiles ignored the one tear that streaked down his cheek, hunched his arms in while maintaining his grip on the side of the bed—his backbone stuck out under the t-shirt. His shoulderblades, too, the way he was hunched. “But I … she asked, and you said _no_ , and she was hurting, she _hurt,_ and _nothing_ was going to save her, nothing, and you still told her no. I couldn’t. I. I could, I can make that call, sometimes it’s even the right one, not just the one that saves the most lives. And it’s not _my fault_ you were too scared.” Stiles’ voice was so tight it was almost a creak. 

John’s ass managed to find the actual seat of a chair, which was good because standing was becoming an issue. “You. You weren’t supposed to hear that conversation.” That came out as more of a wheeze than he’d like. 

Stiles’ face contorted, this—grimace—but he shrugged, again. “Melissa had a code blue. Where the fuck else was I going to go besides back to the room? I used to be better at staying out of the way, then. Although you guys were yelling pretty loudly anyway.” He sounded as bitter as John felt, most of the time.

It was. It made sense. He’d always figured it had been Melissa, she’d have had the knowhow, a malfunctioning morphine drip would have been easy for her. Angie and she had been friends. But—Stiles. 

Stiles.

Oh.

Holy fuck.

Stiles sniffed, just once. “Someone had to do it. Someone had to take care of her.” And then, for the first time since this whole not-conversation began, he broke eye contact, hunching in on himself even further. 

Anyone who said that your whole life only flashed in front of your eyes at your death hadn’t ever had their kid come out and roundabout tell you that they’d get the fuck out of your hair because they knew you hated them because they’d had the guts to do what you hadn’t, and get your wife’s suffering done with. 

Stiles had been _eight_. 

Eight.

And he had pretty much immediately picked up the shopping, the cooking, the laundry, all the housework his mom always did, even though they’d never been much for chores except making him clean up his room. But Stiles had done some internal math—while John had just been drinking his fucking feelings about how much he missed his Angie and what was he going to do with his handful of a kid who just—was just like her, so smart, so many words, so many thoughts, and John wasn't a moron, but he didn't fool himself to think he'd ever been as smart as Agniezska. He'd just counted himself incredibly lucky. He’d felt relieved that at least Stiles had a sensible head on his shoulders and knew how to eat without setting fire to the house. _Someone had to do it,_ , Stiles said, and for almost ten years now, hadn’t Stiles really been the parent in the ways that counted?

Who the hell worked overnights for a whole week, saw their kids for ten, twenty minutes a day? Who the fuck made their kid tell them how they were doing in school before parent-teacher night, and then never did squat to check in about it after? Just because Stiles was a good kid, most of the time, and could be trusted to take care of himself—he’d figured he was always a phone call away. 

How many times had Stiles called with a real problem?

“No.” He took a breath. Another, because his chest fucking hurt, damnit, almost ten years of shit he’d figured he didn’t have to say, because they’d been through it together—and it turned out, they really hadn’t. He’d thought. Well, fucking poetic metaphors about grief to the side, he’d thought they were on the same page, and instead the last few years’ drift was just the final crack in something that had been there all along. That John had let… “No,” he tried, because that wasn’t…

“She hurt! I had to!” Stiles yelled—and suddenly, everything was so goddamned clear.

Someone should just fucking shoot John and put them both out of his misery—because Stiles had thought—all this time—and John hadn’t known, hadn’t pushed him to talk about it because the sheriff should be a guy who could sympathize, and he was, and they’d been through it together, he thought he knew how Stiles felt, and that Stiles knew why he worked so much, because if he couldn’t save Angie, at least he could make the town safer. For Stiles. Except—it wasn’t, and it hadn’t been about Stiles. It had been about something all-consuming to do, because too much time at home just made him drink. The house was too empty, Stiles holed up in his room doing schoolwork, that or the place was empty while Stiles ran around town with Scott.

John knew jack shit about what his kid thought. Or what his kid thought John thought about _him_. And fuck if John hadn’t treated half their interactions these last couple of years like either a snark-off or an interrogation. Of course Stiles had gone out and made a new family with a pack of goddamned werewolves, because at least they showed him on a regular basis that—

“You’re a good kid. A great kid. Just, no, you’re wrong, I just don’t want you getting hurt,” John blurted, somehow managing to make it over to the bed, out of the chair, put something besides jello back into his legs before he could haul Stiles in, Stiles who was too tall to tuck into his chest anymore because he was going to be taller than John—wrapped his arms around him and hung on because Jesus, “I didn’t know, kid, I didn’t, I just wanted you to be happy, have friends, be normal, not that kid who—“

“Got picked on because he was a spaz and his mommy was dead and his dad was the sheriff, because that doesn’t make him stand out more than he already does ‘cause he can’t keep his mouth shut? Can’t stop having too many _feelings_?” Stiles’ tone was muffled because he was shoved into John’s chest, but the bitterness came through loud and clear. “I was always a freak. I tried, but, I’m, I can’t be like whatever it is that I’m. That you. I'm just not…” 

“Stop it. Stop. Stiles, listen to me,” he interrupted, because he couldn’t listen to his kid fill in the gaps of the stuff John didn’t say with things that weren’t true, weren’t what John thought at all. “Just. Shut up for a few minutes and let me get my thoughts together, will you? I love you, period, and kid, I just, I know I fucked up, but nothing you did…”

Stiles choked, pulling away, and John tried to hold on, but Stiles, even attached to the IV poles John was doing a shitty job of ignoring-- _pale, bony, bruises like a peach, just like his mother,_ said the same voice that talked to him when he drank—had gotten stronger than John had had any idea, and was shoving John back before he pulled his hands up over his head, breathing hard, forced, even. 

“Hey, hey, Stiles, it’s okay, it’s okay,” John managed, because he’d always been useless when Stiles freaked out, but then the door flung open and Derek Hale was shouldering John to the side, that red glare directed at John for upsetting his own fucking son. 

The werewolf somehow managed to be gentle and yet yank Stiles’ hands away from where he was doing a shitty job of pretending that he wasn’t there. He muscled his way in, around Stiles, and did nothing more than wrap his arms around Stiles and breathe in a more measured way than Stiles was managing on his own. 

John waited, because it was all he could do, and however much longer it was that Stiles had calmed down, enough that Derek relaxed his grip—just a bit—and didn’t look once at John as he said, his voice quiet and calm, “Stiles, your dad loves you, and you didn’t do anything wrong, and you have to listen to him and not the _rawr, this is my pain, fuck you_ voice in your head, because your dad’s telling the truth. You could find out for yourself if you wanted to write out the runes. No one thinks you did anything wrong—ever. Just, things have been awful, and you’ve done what it takes to protect. You do. You will. I promise. Okay?”

This conversation sounded like one they’d had before—and fuck if John couldn’t guess that Derek had his own boatload of issues. John knew the two of them were—attached in a way the other wolves weren’t, but Stiles spent most nights at home now, even when Derek was there. There was nothing sexual going on. He could tell that. But this, whatever it was that underlay the conversation Derek and Stiles were having, attached like limpets with Stiles just as tall as Derek but so much less bulk, less muscle to defend himself with, and really, not that much younger at all—it was something more private, bigger than maybe he’d even had with Angie, and something more alien-- _werewolf-ish_ \-- than he understood.

The two of them sat there, Derek’s nose and mouth right under Stiles’ ear as he breathed in and out, as Stiles breathed with him, as they sat—awkward-- with legs dangling all the wrong ways off the bed.

“Okay?” Derek asked again. 

Stiles nodded, inhaled, let it out in a gust. Derek loosened his grip just a bit more, then said, “Words, sourwitch, c’mon. Don’t make me do all the talking, you know that’s a recipe for disaster.”

Stiles snorted—barely a huff, but still, it was a snort, some joke between them in the nickname, the thing about talking, because John had talked with Derek plenty, but no one would ever say the boy was chatty. 

He supposed they complemented each other that way; Derek brooded, used silence as a blunting instrument, all pissed-off looks and angry eyebrows. Stiles used words to flood you until you let him off the subject, because half the time you’d forget, or get distracted by one of his exaggerated faces.

“I’m sorry,” Stiles muttered, cheeks turning red in embarrassment about something. Maybe getting hugged by the pack alpha in front of his father when there was—something more than pack going on.

“Don’t apologize, you don’t owe me any apology, Stiles,” John finally managed. “I’m sorry. I … have a lot of thinking to do.”

“Thinking’s kind of bad if it’s feelings,” Stiles managed. It wasn’t even a half-hearted quip—a quarter, maybe—and oh. Well. Yeah. Sarcasm would be a defense. Of course it would. Until this witch shit came along, it was probably his only, best weapon, and he’d gotten it from John, because John knew he was a lying sonofabitch. Why would you ever admit how you felt about something, after all, when you could snark about it instead and let people figure what they would?

“We’re going to fix this.” He was going to fix this. Because it was his mess in the first place; Stiles might be nearly a grownup, might have a whole pack of lost boys who were better about saying thank you than John ever was, but John was the cause. When had he ever thanked Stiles for his plain baked chicken and steamed brown rice and veggies, these last ten years, when John bitched about wanting bacon and Stiles was just trying to protect him from… everything, but an eight-year old kid only knew how to microwave dinner, that, do the laundry, and be nosy about John's cases. Oh. Fuck. Because he was trying to show an interest in the one thing John talked about, and John had shoved Stiles off (procedure aside), because he didn't want his little boy figuring out how ugly people could get. What was that Winston Churchill quote? Something about going through hell, and keep going?

Stiles had learned way too much about taking care of himself. “I’m going to fix this, kid. Promise.”

Stiles nodded, about to say something else when John’s cell phone rang. He didn’t miss how Derek’s arms went from looser to tighter as John stood to fish the phone out of his pocket, see who it was. Stiles stiffened, because of course it was work, and they’d be wanting John to come in for some thing or other.

He stepped out in the hall, took the call, gave some instructions. Hung up. Dialed a number. “Hey, Jim, John Stilinski. Look, I’ve got a family situation, I need a favor. There’s a missing persons come in to my office, can you liaise with Carmody in my department and make sure it gets dealt with? And… if you could lend me some deputies for a week or two? Or recommend someone who wouldn’t mind relocating to Beacon? I need to cut back my hours.”

He let one part of himself listen, respond to the Sacramento sheriff’s questions, make the arrangements. The rest of him, though, the part of him that was a father, not just a sheriff—he’d been the sheriff for too long, too much, let the office become almost the only thing that he was—watched as Stiles responded, low-voiced, to whatever Derek was saying, the pink of shame on his cheeks slowly fading as they talked, as Derek shifted to sit shoulder to shoulder, leg to leg with his son. 

For all that the two boys weren’t hugging any more, John felt like a voyeur. 

He supposed he’d better get used to that feeling. He’d had Stiles under his roof all these years and missed the whole part where Stiles had become not just an adult (because what did being an adult mean, except doing shit that gave you the screaming meemies just because it had to be done?), but also a sheriff of sorts.

Yeah. John was a hell of a role model. 

Shaking his head, he sent Cindy a text, then re-entered the room. 

“Alright, we’re going to have to talk more about feelings some other time, but that’s enough for tonight. Turn the game on, or something.”

Stiles looked startled, but Derek looked—satisfied. 

“You’re not going to work?” his son asked, his tone far too constricted for what ought to be an obvious question and answer. Except it hadn’t been obvious, not until now, and so—Stiles had hidden, more and more, just like John had. 

“I’m not going anywhere, kid. Now turn on the TV and shove over,” he managed around the lump in his throat. Derek’s non-reddened eyes met his for a moment before he said, “Iron Chef’s on.” He scooted over, and Stiles followed—that, or Derek tugged, it was hard to tell with how fluid the transition was. 

But they left room for John.

Stiles knocked his knee against John’s when he managed to get settled in the tiny hospital bed with his son. And his alpha werewolf friend-whatever-he-was. Stiles didn’t look up from flicking through the channels with the hospital remote—but he left his knee against John’s as the secret ingredient was announced, all the way through the BS as all the teams started to spout crap about what they were going to do with kohlrabi.

It was a start.

“A sweet mousse with sage? That’s disgusting,” Stiles snorted. 

“Not as bad as those oatmeal cookies Erica made,” Derek shrugged, looking a bit guilty as he said it. “Who forgets the sugar?”

John remembered those cookies. She’d been sad, Erica had, to figure out that they were just fibrous hockey pucks, but he’d hugged her anyway, told her she’d get it right next time, and she’d smiled back, so brightly, like a little encouragement was all she’d needed.

Encouragement. Right. He could do that for Stiles. He could keep going. For Stiles. Angie would want that.

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this chapter from Lydia’s perspective, but being Lydia, she wanted a novel’s worth of space, and other things kept coming in—and this section, right in the middle, didn’t feel right to be told from anyone’s POV except the sheriff’s. Or Stiles’. So Lydia’s declamations on all things werewolf and magic and Jackson and Stiles and people not doing things her way will have to come later. Hopefully next.
> 
> Many, many thanks to everyone for the very, very helpful comments & questions & kudos last section-- I really appreciate it, and am still catching up with responses. Thank you for reading, as always.


End file.
